According to these statistics, u.s. voters are becoming increasingly anti-abortion.
If that’s true, I suppose there’s at least some comfort to be derived from the fact that it’s Obama who’ll be picking Souter’s successor.
Still, the most reliable defense of abortion rights will ultimately have to come, not from the permission of judges and electorates, but from direct action. As Sonia Johnson wrote in 1989:
So the men let us have legalized abortion, and almost instantly the energy drained from the movement, like air from a punctured balloon. Instead of the Women’s Liberation Movement, we became simply the Women’s Movement, because liberation is antithetical to letting men, depending upon men to, make the laws that govern our lands. For the last 15 years we have been nailed to the system by Roe v. Wade, our mighty energy and hope and love channeled into begging men in dozens of state and national bodies not to pare away cent by cent the truly miserable allowance they promised us for abortions for poor women.
If we hadn’t trusted them again, if we had kept on going in the direction we were headed, with the same time and money and energy we have since expended on groveling, we could by this time have had a woman on every block in every city and town who is an expert on contraceptives, women’s health, birthing, and abortion. We could have educated the women of this country in countless creative ways about their bodies and their right to rule them. We would have learned how to govern ourselves, discovering a whole new way for women – and therefore everyone – to be human.
And, significantly, a Bork could have been appointed to every seat of the Supreme Court, men could have been spewing laws aimed at controlling our bodies out of every legal orifice, and all their flailing and sputtering would simply be irrelevant.
This moral of course generalises to further rights besides abortion. As La Boétie long ago advised us (unless it was Montaigne):
I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.
While I’m at it, here’s another great quote from Sonia Johnson:
I have heard women involved in male politics say about our political system almost the same words I have heard battered women use about their abusers: ‘Of course our government isn’t perfect, but where is there a better one? With all its faults, it is still the best system (husband) in the world.’ Like a battered wife, they never think to ask the really relevant questions: who said we needed a husband, or a husband-state, at all?
You’re making libertarianism refutation very difficult for me this go-round. Thank you.
Roderick, do you believe there is a non-enforceable moral obligation not to have an abortion?
No, not generally.
I should probably clarify both the “no” and the “generally.”
So, first, why the “no”? Because the idea of an obligation to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is essentially that of an obligation to let one’s body be used against one’s will. That’s analogous to a moral obligation to submit to rape.
Given that reason, why the “generally”? Because it seems to me that there are cases where a woman’s reasons for seeking abortion might be bad ones. Here’s one: suppose she really wants to keep the baby, but she’s being bullied by her family into having an abortion in order to avoid disgracing the family. In that case I think she probably has a moral obligation to defy the family and not have an abortion.
I think you’ve mentioned before that you were open to the idea of implicit contracts – does this mean consensual sex has some bearing on whether or not the pregnancy is unwanted?
Also, is this situation similar to someone walking down the street and noticing a disabled person lying on the road, in imminent danger? Of course, if an obligation exists to help the disabled person, it would not be enforceable. But if it does exist, wouldn’t it also require the helper’s body to be used?
Maybe the terms I’m using are imprecise and/or incorrect, because since the obligation is non-enforceable I don’t see how fulfilling it would be against one’s will.
Oops, I hadn’t read the link Nick posted yet.
Yeah, I address both those questions in my abortion article.
I’m also a fan of this piece by my colleague Mike Watkins.
The notion of “invasion” and “unwanted pregnancy” is interesting because it abrogates the responsibility for the child’s creation from the mother and onto — whom?
But it’s her body, her eggs, her decision to engage in reproductive behaviour.
And it’s ultimately her responsibility to speak for a child that cannot speak for itself, cannot defend itself, cannot engage in debates over whether it should be killed or not, cannot make use of the convolutions of the political machines to protect itself. And it’s the mother’s responsibility because the child is held in her womb. Nature made men and women fundamentally different and that’s that. No flowery rhetoric can change it.
Well, I address all those points in the article. Watkins addresses them, from a somewhat different angle, in his article as well. To say nothing of the fact that they were (IMHO) disposed of by Thomson in 1971.
That piece is difficult to read with that formatting. The text shouldn’t encroach on the window borders like that.
It doesn’t do that on my screen. What browser are you using?
It will do so in all browsers, because a) the html code is very basic old-school stuff, and b) there is no code at all to contain the text in any way, shape, matter or form. If it were me I’d drop the whole article into a container that has 200px of margin-left and margin-right. It’s not a bad idea to have a background colour other than white — just not the colour on that page. Grey text against a slightly lighter grey background is the easiest to read.
Whatever one’s views on the abortion the idea that the constitution contains a right to have one is laughable. For a constitutional right to abortion an amendment should have been introduced rather than allowing judges to interpret the law according to their whims.
“Whatever one’s views on the abortion the idea that the constitution contains a right to have one is laughable.”
Strictly speaking, the Constitution does not contain the right to abortion. It also doesn’t contain the right to have children, listen to music, drive cars, or breathe. It does, however, contain the ninth amendment, which makes explicit what most of the founders thought was already self-evident: the Constitution does not grant rights to the people, but rather denies powers to the state.
Of course, there are those who see this as moot.
the idea that the constitution contains a right to have one is laughable
I don’t give a damn about the Constitution, and if a judge has to decide between following the Constitution and respecting individual rights, it would be their moral duty to do the latter.
Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, I do think there is a Constitutional right to an abortion. This would be true even if there were no definite passages from which such a right could be deduced, since the Constitution expressly says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This is the Constitution’s acknowledgment that our rights precede the Constitution and do not proceed from it.
Moreover, though, there are a number of passages from which the right to abortion can be specifically deduced:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
A woman who is forced by the government to let a fetus use her body as an incubator against her will is subject to an unreasonable seizure of her person.
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted
Forcing someone to undergo the dangerous, painful, and personally violating process of unwanted childbirth is essentially a combination of torture and rape, and certainly counts as cruel punishment.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States
A woman who is forced by the government to let a fetus use her body as an incubator against her will is certainly being subjected to involuntary servitude.
nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
Any law that allows A to force B to let C occupy B’s body against B’s will is clearly not giving B the legal protection equal to that of A and C.
“A woman who is forced by the government to let a fetus use her body as an incubator against her will is subject to an unreasonable seizure of her person.”
Yes I’m quite sure that’s what was in the mind of the people who drafted it.
Incidently I don’t give a damn about the constitution either, I just don’t think highly of those who put laughable interpretations on the law to suit a political agenda. Frankly I think it’s dishonest (as well as an abuse of the English language).
Yes I’m quite sure that’s what was in the mind of the people who drafted it.
What matters is what the words mean, not the private intentions of their authors.
If the king commands that all Scottish people be killed, the fact that he doesn’t know he’s Scottish, or knows but thinks no one would dare apply the rule to him, doesn’t change the fact that he has commanded his own execution. To interpret his command as not applying to him, just because he didn’t intend it to apply to himself, would be an “abuse of the English language.”
See my paper on Spoonerite jurisprudence.
“Yes I’m quite sure that’s what was in the mind of the people who drafted it. ”
Assuming this is sarcasm, and you mean that this wasn’t what the framers of the Constitution had in mind, what of it? The framers (some of them, anyway) also seem to have just assumed that a lot of what they wrote wouldn’t apply to women, slaves, Native Americans, and plenty of other groups that now enjoy (or are supposed to enjoy) the full protection of the Constitution. So much the worse for the framers.
As an analogy, suppose I sign a lease agreement that says I agree to pay my landlord a certain amount of rent every month. Then something unexpected happens: I lose my job, the economy tanks, deflation sets in, whatever. The next month I refuse to pay rent, claiming that “I never intended to pay rent every month… I just meant every month that [unexpected event] doesn’t happen.” I don’t think many judges will care what my intent was, and will rule that I’m still bound by the contract I signed rather than by my peculiar interpretation of it.
…and once again it seems Roderick beat me to the “submit” button. 🙂
When talking of unreasonable searches etc, 9/10 people would probably assume it refers to officials of the state confiscating peoples’ houses or similar possessions, not preventing someone having an abortion. This is the sort of interpretation most people would understand.
Similarly, when talking of “cruel and unusual punishments”, the first thing that springs to mind are methods of torture used by totalitarian regimes, not being compelled to have a baby.
Okay, but how is that a reply to my argument? The Constitution doesn’t say that people should be free from “anything the average person would consider unreasonable seizure of the person,” let alone “whatever would first spring to the average person’s mind as an instance of unreasonable seizure of the person.” It says that people should be free from “unreasonable seizure of the person.” The framers of the Constitution were moral realists, who understood that there is a fact of the matter, one we can discover, as to what constitutes unreasonable seizure, or just compensation, etc. (Again, see my Spooner article.)
“Roderick, do you believe there is a non-enforceable moral obligation not to have an abortion?”
I’ll let Roderick answer that for himself, but I personally think that it is morally good and preferable to have children (serve the life). This is just my personal view and it is non-enforceable. I also believe in free competition between forms of family (polygamy/monogamy, same-sex/heterosexual marriage, et cetera…).
“The Anarchists believe in the family; they only insist that free competition and experiment shall always be allowed in order that it may be determined what form of family best secures this object.” – Benjamin Tucker
Having children is one good thing among many other competing good things. There’s no moral obligation to choose every good thing.
“There’s no moral obligation to choose every good thing.”
Yes.
I was making distinction between “personal morality” (non-enforceable) and “universal ethics” (enforceable). I think that in “personal morality” there is preferable to have children (serve the life). Reproductive anarchy is useful for the future of anarchy. 🙂 Some might think otherwise…
My position on the issue of the abortion is as yours.
I was making distinction between “personal morality” (non-enforceable) and “universal ethics” (enforceable).
Why do you take the personal/universal distinction to line up with the non-enforceable/enforceable distinction? Can’t there be universal obligations that aren’t enforceable?
I don’t think there’s any obligation — enforceable or otherwise — to choose every good thing. (After all, ought implies can.)
I think that in “personal morality” there is preferable to have children (serve the life).
Preferable for whom? For everybody? But then wouldn’t it be universal and not personal?
Also — the choice to “have children” and the choice to bring a particular pregnancy to term seem like different things (though I don’t regard either as obligatory).
Also, what is this entity “the life” that you think we should serve?
I highly doubt Roderick believes in a moral obligation to not have an abortion, but I could be wrong. It would defeat the purpose of celebrating its legality ~ divorcing ethics from politics.
Here’s his writing on the subject: http://praxeology.net/RTL-Abortion.htm
And see footnote 33 of that article.
Ah, thanks Nick and Roderick.
Richard = pwned.
Roderick, perhaps it’s just my Bloglines but your RSS feeds (posts and comments) seem to be on the fritz again. I almost missed this kick-ass post. Can anyone else confirm?
I’ll ask Brandon. He iz mi gooroo.
Brandon says the feed validates. So I dunno.
Do you any speculations as to why the American public’s stated views on abortion have changed significantly within the last year?
My wild guess is that the economic crisis has driven people towards a conservative mindset. and forced many otherwise independent individuals into personal dependency on their families as fallback support systems. From personal experience, traditional families often expect mental conformity, especially on ‘family’ issues, as the price of this support.
In related news…
http://dasnotesfromunderground.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-are-we-doing.html
It could have been an odd sampling. While I think that your idea about “traditional families” is pretty compelling, it could also have to do with a rising tide of collectivist sentiment. Glorification of self sacrifice and increasing calls for regimentation could can stamp out individualist impulses quite effectively.
you can choose between could and can. stupid typo.
Dennis-
Thank you kindly.
Is there a rising tide of collectivist sentiment in the U.S. today? The culture is obviously in terrible shape, and there was a major surge in right-wing collectivism (‘red state fascism’) during the period of the launching of the present wars.
Has anything seriously changed in the American sense of life in the last two years or so? Has the economic crisis changed how the average person feels and thinks?
I’ve read a number of pieces which have condemned the Obama campaign and inauguration in terms of messianic communitarian collectivism, but I wasn’t there to see it. I also don’t trust most of the people who made it their primary business to denounce Obama.
Obviously most of Obama’s critics are simply “fans of the other team.” I also think my offhand hypothesis is hurt by the fact that polls are showing that more Americans support gay marriage than oppose it and that marijuana legalization is increasingly popular (interestingly, do these developments tie into Roderick’s main point?,) so in some ways the ramped up regimentation (yes, I think Obama is even more for it than Bush) has resulted in a somewhat libertarian backlash.
While I’m throwing out alternate explanations, perhaps it is the case that the anti-abortion movement has done a better job of framing the narrative in such a way as to make themselves defenders of the weak. If I remember right, Ayn Rand once observed that the Post War world was given to celebrating the victim, and right or wrong, it seems that the protective instinct most people have toward children carries over to fetuses, making the pro-choice position harder to sell than it should be.
Brandon said: “And it’s ultimately her responsibility to speak for a child that cannot speak for itself, cannot defend itself, cannot engage in debates over whether it should be killed or not, cannot make use of the convolutions of the political machines to protect itself.”
Roderick said: “Well, I address all those points in the article.”
I’ve read the article, and I understand your analogy about the pilot, abandonment, and abortion given the invasion into the mother’s body. However, I think a different analogy is more appropriate.
Imagine a situation where there is a dangerous environmental condition (hurricane, storm, tornado etc), and there is someone who is in your home and remains there for their own safety. For now, let’s imagine you invited this person in, but you now no longer consent to their presence. Given that it is substantially likely that this person would die or suffer great injury by being subjected to the elements of the weather, would your act of removing him from your home not be disproportionate to the invasion? In other words, would you not have a moral responsibility to allow the person to remain until it was safe to leave?
Does your answer change if the person is a trespasser?
would you not have a moral responsibility to allow the person to remain until it was safe to leave?
Yes. But the example is importantly disanalogous to abortion in two ways.
First, an unwanted invasion of the body is more serious than an unwanted invasion of the home. (It’s like rape, after all.)
Second, the fetus has not in any significant sense been “invited” in. You can’t issue an invitation to someone who doesn’t exist yet. (Likewise for Robert Paul’s example above of an implicit contract. You can’t make a contract with someone who doesn’t exist.)
(For that matter, even if you believe that fetuses exist in ghostly form prior to conception, hovering around hoping to be incarnated, having sex is like leaving the window open, not like inviting someone in.)
Oh, Roderick come on.
Nature’s purpose for sex is to reproduce. You can’t seriously be saying that it’s the same thing as opening a window. A window is not an entrance. Perhaps opening a door is more apt.
But that doesn’t matter because if someone engages in unprotected sex and doesn’t expect the result to be a child, then that person is either shockingly naive or even more shockingly stupid. And the woman bears more responsibility for making these choices than the man because the woman has the responsibility for carrying the infant to birth.
This only addresses unprotected sex. What if a condom broke? The purpose of that sex was to not have a child, yet a fetus was created.
But it seems like everyone is willfully ignoring the crux of the issue, which is what is it about people that makes them subject to different rights than other animals, and does a fetus possess those qualities?
In other words, I would argue that if you eat meat, then you have a very difficult case to make that most (or any) abortion is wrong.
Humans have rights because they can understand their own rights and respect the rights of others. Animals do not because they do not have such an ability.
So, I guess your argument is that it’s fine to kill children as long as it’s done before they have the opportunity to develop such knowledge.
Sounds just like something one might read in Der Sturmer in the 30’s.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. Abortion happens because the children are unable to stop it. Might makes right in this situation. No intellectual justification is necessary.
Nature’s purpose for sex is to reproduce.
“Purpose” implies conscious intention. Nature doesn’t have purposes. Nature does have functions, but why should I care about those functions (except insofar as they play a role in determining my natural end)? Is it some sort of sin to use a pinecone as a paperweight? This sounds a lot like the biology-worship I fulminate against here, here, and here.
You can’t seriously be saying that it’s the same thing as opening a window. A window is not an entrance. Perhaps opening a door is more apt.
Who cares whether it’s a door or a window? In either case, you open something knowing that you thereby make it possible for someone to get in, but it is not your aim that they get in, nor are you thereby giving permission to anyone to come in.
But that doesn’t matter because if someone engages in unprotected sex and doesn’t expect the result to be a child, then that person is either shockingly naive or even more shockingly stupid.
What on earth does that have to do with the subject? If I leave a door or window open in a dangerous, high-crime neighbourhood, I may be equally naïve or stupid in not expecting an intruder to come in, but that doesn’t mean I’ve consented to their coming in, or that I’m not permitted to boot them out once they get in.
And the woman bears more responsibility for making these choices than the man because the woman has the responsibility for carrying the infant to birth.
a) I’m not sure the consequent (“the woman bears more responsibility for making these choices than the man”) follows even if one grants the antecedent (“the woman has the responsibility for carrying the infant to birth”). Why should responsibility rest with the party who bears more risk, rather than with the party who imposes more risk?
b) But, more importantly, what’s the argument for the antecedent in the first place? I suspect there’s an equivocation here on two senses of responsibility — retrospective responsibility, where someone is responsible for something’s having happened, and prospective responsibility, where someone has an obligation to bring about some future result (“it’s your responsibility to keep the cistern filled”). These sometimes go together, but they don’t always; if I walk along the beach I’m retrospectively responsible for the fact that there are now a bunch of footprints on the beach, but that doesn’t give me a prospective responsibility to do anything about it. Likewise, if a woman voluntarily engages in unprotected sex, she’s retrospectively responsible for the fetus, in the sense that she’s responsible for the fact that it’s there; but it doesn’t follow that she’s prospectively responsible for it, in the sense of having an obligation to ensure its welfare. You need an additional principle for that.
So, I guess your argument is that it’s fine to kill children as long as it’s done before they have the opportunity to develop such knowledge.
No one’s going to claim that the traits by which one defines personhood (consciousness, rational thought, moral agency, or whatever) have to be present in full actuality in order for someone to have rights — since everyone grants that one can have rights while one is unconscious. So capacities and potentialities matter.
But capacities and potentialities come in different degrees. The capacity of a currently sleeping Arabic speaker to speak Arabic is closer to actuality than my capacity to speak Arabic, because more would have to happen with me than with him for the potentiality to be actualised; all he has to do is wake up, whereas I would have to learn Arabic first. So there’s a sense in which he “can” speak Arabic and I “can’t.” But of course there’s a sense in which I “can” speak Arabic, in that it’s a possible future for me, but not, say, for a dog.
Just as nobody thinks pure actuality is required for personhood, no one thinks mere potentiality is sufficient for it. After all, if mere potentiality were sufficient, then we’d have to count not just fertilised eggs but unfertilised eggs as persons — and nobody does. So everyone agrees that the cut-off between personhood and non-personhood lies somewhere between the bare potentiality of an unfertilised egg and the full potentiality of a conscious adult, and not at either extreme. The question then is where.
I don’t think the permissibility of abortion turns on that question, since I think abortion is justified even if the fetus is a person; but it’s still an interesting question — to which I’m inclined to say this much: it strikes me as awfully strange to place it at any point before the organism even has a brain, and still stranger to place it at a point where its cells haven’t even developed distinct specialisations yet.
Might makes right in this situation. No intellectual justification is necessary.
Since you clearly think abortion is wrong, I don’t know what you mean in saying here that it’s right. But let me ask you the question that I’ve been waiting for years to hear any anti-abortion person answer:
Can you state a moral principle that both a) forbids abortion, and b) doesn’t run afoul of any Thomson-Watkins-type counterexample?
“Nature’s purpose for sex is to reproduce. You can’t seriously be saying that it’s the same thing as opening a window. A window is not an entrance. Perhaps opening a door is more apt.
But that doesn’t matter because if someone engages in unprotected sex and doesn’t expect the result to be a child, then that person is either shockingly naive or even more shockingly stupid. And the woman bears more responsibility for making these choices than the man because the woman has the responsibility for carrying the infant to birth.”
This is always the real point. The questions of fetal life or personhood are distractions, attempts to shift discourse into those ethical realms most firmly dominated by patriolatrous ethics and where the violation of individuality is most readily accepted. The real issue is always about sex, and the notion that it must be essentially reproductive- at least for women. God, sometimes confused with Nature(+), has decreed that women’s sexuality must occur in the context of altruism for men and children. If women’s intelligence or human technology circumvent this righteous commandment, then mens’ coercive laws must fill the breach to see that God’s order is maintained.
Abortion is the best argument I know of for the right to keep and bear arms. The only argument which patriarchs will be moved by is, in the last analysis, the barrel of a gun. Women can only preserve their independence by an equality of power- and an equality of knowledge, which is power. The attempts by patriarchs to maintain monopolies on theology, government, law, medicine, and scholarship all serve the same purpose- to reduce female individuals to mens’ dependent biological objects.
Sonia Johnson is precisely right. Women (and sincere male feminists) should agoristically organise their own networks for the provision of abortion on demand, and preserve their existence by any means necessary. If this policy approach is applied consistently, in an environment which effectively enforces a regime of individual rights, it will quickly bring patriarchal power to its knees by the magic of the marketplace. Men know this in their heart or hearts, which is why patriarchs are everywhere forced to maintain mercantilist sexual economies, sanctified as father-right and holy matrimony.
The abolition of patriarchy is also in the interest of men, because friendship is impossible without equality, and male dominance makes authentic friendship between women and men impossible. But male individuals who have themselves been degraded by their education into patriarchal dominators will never see this. Privilege never gives up power voluntarily, even tho’ the emancipation of the slave is also the condition for the emancipation of the master.
Brandon: *sic semper tyrannus*. Your morality kills human souls, and has destroyed people I loved.
(+) or, less absurdly but more falsely, ‘Reason’. Prof Long: thank you for using reason honestly and for everyone. You are one of the very few that do.
“Humans have rights because they can understand their own rights and respect the rights of others. Animals do not because they do not have such an ability.”
I do not agree with your analysis. Humans have rights in so far as they are persons. So your assertion that “Abortion happens because the children are unable to stop it” is begging the question. I will answer your assumption: a collection of cells with human DNA is not a person. A fetus is not a child and certainly not a person. And a person would have rights regardless of their knowledge of rights simply by virtue of personhood. Under your definition, some mentally handicapped people have no rights, nor would an ignorant person.
Your strategy of willfully mischaracterizing any dissent from your own view as an abomination is extremely rude and pretentious. Why discuss anything if all you are willing to debate is strawmen utliizing ad hominem?
I think it is disingenuous to talk about being “invited.” Your article deals with a situation where the woman voluntarily becomes pregnant. Thus, the existence of the fetus is clearly contemplated and anticipated at the time of the invitation. The creation and the hosting (inviting in) of the fetus are a packaged deal.
I do agree regarding the relative seriousness of the invasion.
You said that a woman can never consent to rape, and I agree. However, a woman must accept that, in some cases where she has given prior consent, she has no recourse for rape over a limited period of time (the amount of time it takes for her to communicate her lack of continued consent to her partner, and the amount of time it takes for the partner to perceive and understand the communication — after all, we’re not telepathic).
Relative seriousness of the invasion as compared with the seriousness of the expulsion seems to be more or less “key” to your analysis. Thus, would you agree that if there were some method short of killing the fetus that the mother could use, she would be morally obligated to do so? (E.g., instead of a late term abortion, perhaps undergoing a C-section, and incubating and ultimately putting the infant up for adoption, where such an alternative is physically viable).
Thus, would you agree that if there were some method short of killing the fetus that the mother could use, she would be morally obligated to do so?
In cases of early abortion, no (since an early fetus is not a person).
In cases of late abortion, I lean toward yes (see footnote 40 in my article), but it will depend on the details — and in particular on whether the alternative method is more or less intrusive than abortion.
E.g., instead of a late term abortion, perhaps undergoing a C-section
C-section strikes me as more potentially invasive of the mother than abortion is, so I’d be inclined to think a woman within her rights to choose abortion over C-section.
“While I’m throwing out alternate explanations, perhaps it is the case that the anti-abortion movement has done a better job of framing the narrative in such a way as to make themselves defenders of the weak. If I remember right, Ayn Rand once observed that the Post War world was given to celebrating the victim, and right or wrong, it seems that the protective instinct most people have toward children carries over to fetuses, making the pro-choice position harder to sell than it should be.”
I think there’s a lot of truth in this, and thank you for saying it. When I think of abortion politics, I look to emancipation, to autonomy, to sexuality, to independence- to *strengths*, in this case exemplified by a woman’s assertive control of her own life and body.
But the forced-pregnancy advocates appeal precisely to thoughts of weakness, helplessness, smallness, restraint, pity. They see a weak and helpless creature- a fetus. To think of an already alive, violent, willed woman is thought to be ghoulishly selfish.
The Rand analogy in very apt, except that here it’s the social liberals losing every battle by conceding ethical superiority to the right. If your standard is altruism, the theocrats are unassailable. Of course, it was the priestly ancestors of those theocrats who made the rules to which all altruism traces back.
The fetus is guilty of a wrongful violation of its mother’s body? Changing your mind about a pregnancy is equivalent to changing your mind about having sex? If I didn’t know you were a serious guy, I’d think this was a satirical reductio.
Granting that the fetus is a person and that the pregnancy is initially wanted, it’s hard to see how the mother is not responsible for the alleged ‘violation.’ Your attempt to resist the analogy with Stan abandoning his passengers is pretty bizarre; if the passengers aren’t guilty of a boundary-violation for demanding that Stan continue to fly the plane against his will, it isn’t clear why a fetus that exists because its mother wanted it to exist is somehow guilty of such a violation. The real trouble with the argument, though, comes with your failure to show that the child is not violating its mother’s boundary while the fetus is.
When you’re arguing for abortion, you say:
1. “Using its mother’s body as an incubator” constitutes a boundary-crossing of the mother on the part of the fetus
2. An unwanted boundary-crossing is a boundary-invasion.
3. A boundary-invasion that is not necessary to counteract a boundary-invasion is a wrongful boundary-violation.
When you are defending the new-born, you deny that the child is guilty of an invasion. Yet you acknowledge that the child depends on the mother’s care for survival. So you apparently want to say that, in the case of the new-born, the child’s dependence does not constitute any kind of boundary-crossing. If it’s a boundary-crossing, then it should be an invasion simply by virtue of being unwanted. You say that it doesn’t count as an invasion (surely you must mean ‘crossing’) because “the child is merely lying there, newborn, not invading anything.” So you seem to be assuming that being inside the mother is somehow crossing a boundary, whereas being completely dependent on the mother and making a sort of claim on the mother’s action is not. I’m not sure why you think so. Perhaps you think it’s just obvious that “using its mother’s body as an incubator” involves using its mother as a means, while lying there completely helpless does not involve taking any action, and so cannot involve using the mother as a means. The idea that a fetus’ nutritive functions constitute an ‘action’ on its part is pretty silly (though from your descriptions, one would never guess that a fetus was not a fully developed moral agent who made the outrageous decision to use some woman’s body as a mere means to his own ends — perhaps you have a quasi-Platonic theory of persons as pre-existent fetuses who get in touch with all of reality when they’re in the womb but forget it at birth?). So is the suggestion that the situation is importantly different after the child “comes into the world” (as though a woman’s womb were not a part of the world — your theory is sounding more Platonic all the time). You describe it as the mother placing the child in a situation in which it depends on her care for its survival. Could you explain to me how the child did not depend on her care for its survival when it was a fetus? As a father yourself, you’re no doubt aware that a fetus isn’t likely to get born at all without the mother’s “positive assistance” (or did you imagine that your wife contributed nothing to the proper functioning of that “automatic (!) life support system” that she is? You’re sounding more Aristotelian now). So the situation of the fetus is a whole lot more like the situation of the newborn than you make out. Your only hope for salvation here is to show that just being inside the mother’s body somehow involves using her as a means in a way that the child won’t be once he’s outside. Besides the fact that the mother will remain every bit as much a means to the child’s ends as she was to the fetus’, its hard not to let one’s eyes roll a bit at the suggestion that a fetus’ nutritive functions are a kind of morally assessable action on its part. If anyone is morally responsible for a fetus’ nutritive functions, it’s the mother who intentionally acted to bring the fetus into the world (a part of which the womb most definitely is).
So, even granting all of your assumptions, your argument is a pretty wacky failure. And I won’t even get started on your monomaniacal Kantianism (I can’t figure out why you call yourself an Aristotelian, unless perhaps you only become a rigid deontologist when you’re talking about abortion).
I suggest you try giving up the Rawlsian let’s-justify-our-pretheoretical-prejudices-whatever-the-cost-and-give-it-the-fancy-name-of-reflective-equilibrium style of moral theorizing sometime and face the possibility that moral philosophy might require you to change your mind.
And no, by the way, I’m not a pro-lifer.
The fetus is guilty of a wrongful violation of its mother’s body?
No, the fetus isn’t guilty of anything. Whether a wrongful violation occurs and whether the violator is morally responsible for it are two different questions; see here.
Changing your mind about a pregnancy is equivalent to changing your mind about having sex? If I didn’t know you were a serious guy, I’d think this was a satirical reductio.
Granting that the fetus is a person and that the pregnancy is initially wanted, it’s hard to see how the mother is not responsible for the alleged ‘violation.’
Well, my analogy with withdrawing consent to sex was intended to answer that. But you obviously find that analogy risible; since you don’t say what you find risible about it (it seems pretty straightforward to me), I’m not sure what to say.
Your attempt to resist the analogy with Stan abandoning his passengers is pretty bizarre; if the passengers aren’t guilty of a boundary-violation for demanding that Stan continue to fly the plane against his will, it isn’t clear why a fetus that exists because its mother wanted it to exist is somehow guilty of such a violation.
Well, I answered that question in the article. I guess you don’t like my answer, but you don’t say what you don’t like about it; you just repeat the question in an incredulous tone.
Perhaps you think it’s just obvious that “using its mother’s body as an incubator” involves using its mother as a means, while lying there completely helpless does not involve taking any action, and so cannot involve using the mother as a means.
Yes, I do think that’s just obvious.
The idea that a fetus’ nutritive functions constitute an ‘action’ on its part is pretty silly (though from your descriptions, one would never guess that a fetus was not a fully developed moral agent who made the outrageous decision to use some woman’s body as a mere means to his own ends
No, you’re the one who’s assimilating all action to conscious/voluntary/responsible action (as in your constant references to the fetus’s being “guilty” of a violation). As I explained in the paper, I was discussing action in a broad sense; I explicitly said that nutritive actions count, which is why I gave the example of the Venus’-fly-trap.
Could you explain to me how the child did not depend on her care for its survival when it was a fetus?
I never claimed that the child does not depend on her care for its survival when it’s a fetus. On the contrary, I explicitly stated that it did. You seem to have misunderstood the structure of my argument and what the difference between the moral status of the fetus and the newborn is supposed to be.
As a father yourself
Huh? Not as far as I’m aware.
its hard not to let one’s eyes roll a bit at the suggestion that a fetus’ nutritive functions are a kind of morally assessable action on its part.
I certainly agree. But that “suggestion” was your invention, not any part of my argument.
I won’t even get started on your monomaniacal Kantianism
What are you referring to? If you just mean my mere use of the language of not using people as mere means, that terminology is Kantian but the idea isn’t.
I suggest you try giving up the Rawlsian let’s-justify-our-pretheoretical-prejudices-whatever-the-cost-and-give-it-the-fancy-name-of-reflective-equilibrium style of moral theorizing sometime and face the possibility that moral philosophy might require you to change your mind.
That’s not an accurate description of reflective equilibration — which frequently requires one to change one’s mind, often drastically (and which was Socratic and Aristotelean before it was Rawlsian). For my defense of reflective equilibration see here.
Maybe Roderick’s time-traveling son from the future has come back to warn us about electing Obama and… oh wait, nevermind.
If he’s my future son, maybe he’s hoping to convert me to pro-life so I won’t want to abort him. But shouldn’t he be making that case to his future mother?
Well, maybe he is. Does his future mother have a blog? Is he commenting there also? What’s the URL? And is she anybody I know? I hope we raise our kid to read more carefully ….
One more point:
The purpose of the Stan-the-pilot case was to establish that certain apparent lettings-die actually count as killings. Likewise, the fact that the mother who voluntarily gives birth has voluntarily placed the child in a situation where it depends on her is sued to show that child abandonment would be killing. In that respect it’s like abortion, which is also a case of killing and not mere letting-die. But that doesn’t yet settle the question of what’s permissible and what’s not (since killing is sometimes permissible and sometimes not). That’s why I go on to argue that killing is justified in one case and not in the other. The stuff about voluntarily placing the child in a situation, etc., etc. is not part of my direct argument for the moral difference between abortion and abandonment; it’s argumentatively upstream from that — it’s part of my argument for abandonment’s being a killing rather than a letting-die. So the fact that the fetus also depends on the mother, which you introduce as if it’s some telling point you expect me to deny, is something I’m assuming from the start.
Hmm, if I was the writer then I’d either have your son come back in time to warn you that your agorist ways will result in the withering away of the state, and the later extinction of humanity at the hands of aliens since it lacks the “organizational advantage” afforded by central planning, or else to stop his archenemy from killing you and preventing his ever existing.
Can we go back in time and distribute RU486 to the ancestors of the troublesome aliens?
You seem to have misunderstood the structure of my argument and what the difference between the moral status of the fetus and the newborn is supposed to be.
Well, you’re the one who described the difference of the situation as follows:
she is voluntarily moving it from a situation in which it has an automatic life-support system to a situation in which it [181] does not.25 In other words, she is cutting it off from its life-support system and placing it in a situation where it depends on her care for survival.
If being in the mother’s womb also involves depending on the mother for care and survival, then the second sentence there is pretty uninformative. Since at that point you’re supposed to be explaining the difference, it’s hardly uncharitable to suppose that you’re appealing to some property that isn’t true of both circumstances.
So, let me try again, and we’ll see if I understand the structure of the argument. The crucial point, I take it, is that an unwanted fetus discharging its nutritive functions constitutes a boundary violation, whereas an unwanted newborn who depends on its mother for sustenance does not. The only thing I can see that you say to explain this difference is that the newborn is just laying there. Presumably you imagine that the fetus is more active (more an agent) than the newborn, though in both cases the child more or less passively receives what it needs from the mother. The child’s role in all of this seems to differ very little; at both points the child exists in a state of dependence as a consequence of the mother’s intentional action. You assert that the fetus constitutes a special threat in using the the mother’s body in an intimate and personal way without her consent. That’s supposed to be the whole of the problem with rape. So receiving the nutrients necessary to keep you alive from a woman who brought you into being by her own consent is equivalent to forcing a woman to give you sexual gratification? The only way to make that vaguely plausible is to downplay differences in the moral status of the fetus and the rapist. You try to address this, but besides overlooking the difference between receiving nutrients necessary for life and obtaining sexual gratification, you breeze through your argument that involuntariness is irrelevant. Besides being way too quick, it’s also question-begging. You say:
To be sure, considerations of the threat’s innocence or guilt may legitimately affect judgments of the moral proportionality of the response. But when the threat is as personal and intrusive as an unwanted pregnancy, it is difficult to see how the innocence of the fetus could make enough of a difference to justify forcing the mother to quietly endure nine months of what is tantamount to rape.
Given that you’re trying to answer an objection to the analogy between unwanted pregnancy and rape, you can’t appeal to the analogy in your defense. Or rather, you can, but you’re just providing material for the newest logic textbook’s section on informal fallacies.
Even if the relevance of involuntariness weren’t substantially more complex than you let on, the analogy between rape and unwanted pregnancy is more asserted than defended. At least, you say:
it is precisely this same fact that gives Miriam the right to kill her unwanted fetus Joshua: not that he threatens her with pain or injury, but that he uses her body in the most deeply intimate and personal way, without her consent(even if she originally consented).
I don’t think it’s uncharitable to read that as an assertion rather than an argument.
You’ll forgive me if I insist on hearing more of an argument before I accept an account of the wrong of rape that puts it on a level with growing in someone’s womb. I’m inclined to reject this as demeaning the wrong of rape as much as it inflates the ‘threat’ of unwanted pregnancy.
Since I doubt that you and I are going to agree on much (including whether or not your use of reflective equilibration more or less amounts to tweaking your principles until they give you the answers that you’ve never seriously put in doubt — note that I didn’t say that your use of the method doesn’t make you change your mind about *anything*; I’m alleging that it’s a fancy methodological mask for dogmatism; I don’t assert that the method must be used as such, just that your use of it here strikes me as just as flagrant of Rawls’ use of it in ToJ) — so let me just ask a general question that bears on this issue as well as broader concerns. What’s so important about consent? Why doesn’t it matter whether a person’s lack of consent is reasonable? I don’t doubt that consent is important, I just don’t think I find it as important as you do, and I’m certainly not clear on why you take it to be so important as to render an unwanted pregnancy the equivalent of rape or to justify anarchism.